


Young Blood

by neauxzi (yuuriyuu)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Blood and Injury, F/M, Gen, Home Farm, I tried to make this cute, In the form of Otabek, Light Masochism, M/M, POV Otabek Altin, Puppy Love, Teenagers, Yuri Plisetsky is a Brat, can you tell i love Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23078707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuriyuu/pseuds/neauxzi
Summary: He wonders how Yuri can summon such a euphoric feeling with just his eyes. He's not pressed to get bitten, but curiosity did kill the cat.
Relationships: Otabek Altin & Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Young Blood

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my WIP folder for the longest fucking time, so I'm posting it AND it's 4am, so YEAH I mighta missed some editing, oops. I saw them as like 16/17 in this, or somewhere in that realm, so it's a moderate level of feelings and stuffs
> 
> I didn't realize it was so long either! But 7000 words of Otayuri is always a blessing tbh

Just outside the back of the barn, where the edge of their gate cuts off and open to a flower spotted clearing, thick with poppies and sunflowers and dandelions, Otabek rakes with dry fingers around the wooden handle. Sweat beads along his brow, skin slick under suffocating air and tied over with a perpetual glare that just settles under the assault of relentless heat. The kind of heat that not even shade can provide much of an escape from. 

Even still, he has little disdain for the weather, he's grown quite welcoming of the hot season, rather enjoying the draining nature of heat that infiltrates everything at this time of year. He likes to sweat. Though, as the exposure to the sun itself, the barn provides a nice expanse of shade from the sun and Otabek exploits it, with no need to squint he can watch Yuri unobstructed in all the bright glory of morning.

Yuri finds it disgusting, sweat. He moves slow and aimless under the surrounding heat, probably to avoid giving stream to the moisture along his hairline, if there is any. Yuri never seems to moisten under the weather. He lies in the grass like a log when there are chores to be done and yawns lazily and sometimes, he rolls his eyes to Otabek and moves around like an animal prowling the grass for its prey.

Alan insists that he's just strange. He doesn't believe that Yuri would burn. He laments in Otabek’s forgiveness of Yuri’s leisure and shakes his head at the sight of Otabek working and Yuri stretched out like a cat. Like Potya, the stray Yuri dotes on like his own child. The cat stays close to the Plisetsky house, so Otabek doesn't see her often, but when he does she's always just a bit fatter. 

Maybe his father has a point about Yuri being strange, but Otabek doesn’t know many Russians and as far as he is concerned, Yuri is the most interesting thing to happen upon their farm since his youngest little sister opened her eyes after birth and that pale hazel gazes back at them all, unlike anything their family genes are known for.

Alan doesn't believe that Yuri'd melt a painful shade of red and wretch until there is nothing left in him. Otabek has seen it. Yuri likes to test his tolerance dangerously. Otabek has no idea what it is. Yuri doesn’t seem to have very much idea either. Nikolai scolds his recklessness with familiar scowls.

Much like a dream, the dead heat of midsummer makes Yuri Plisetsky bloom. A sunflower he is, thin and straight, blossoming yellow at his peak. He blends in amongst a field of flowers and sunlight. 

And yet, he clashes. Nothing in Almaty Is that pale and in the case that anything is, after a summer here, it is no longer. 

And yet, Yuri Plisetsky lies in the grass with bare feet and a large, straw woven hat about him, undoubtedly Nikolai’s, and absolutely blinding in a pallid color of skin that gives affront to the sun. The heels of his feet bob in the air like the bees that circle the stalking sunflowers that rise high around him, the skin there is delicate as well.

He knows better than to lie out like that. Nikolai Plisetsky has warned him plenty, but if there's anything the younger Plisetsky has in common with the elder, it's his stubborn nature.

“Otabek…”

Otabek spends much of the time they spend together weighed upon by anxiety. Yuri makes light of his condition, Otabek fears it like Yuri should. Nikolai scolds him for his carelessness.

“Y-yes?” Distracted with his thoughts, Otabek stutters outloud as he seems to acknowledge Yuri in mind before realizing his "yes," was spoken aloud. 

“Stop worrying,”Yuri says, crawling around in the stems of sunflowers and in the blades of grass, Yuri falls to sit on his bottom and plucks the petals off a red poppy. Feet folded under him such that his entire being is overshadowed by the woven straw atop his head.

“I won't be out here too long.”

The sun is high. The cicadas sing and the locusts have begun their migration all about the woods a little ways away from them at center. The sounds of nature becomes an afterthought, but for Yuri they should be a warning. 

Yuri blinks from the petals to Otabek with a thin mouth and delicate, slow movements. From Otabek to the petals. The moist hollows forming under his eyes are worrisome, but he smirks. He leads Otabek's mind a stray with the slight and slow reveal of his teeth.

“Come into the barn at least,” Otabek asks of him, but he expects pushback. Yuri’s body language, his slightly slouch over slender limbs and knees bent high to prop his elbows reads him as careless. His flat stare boring into the stem left over of a flower destroyed.

“Come into the sun with me,” Yuri bids himself. Yuri slaps his legs and jerks as he throws his voice for the sake of the command. The rich drop in his voice is a little beckoning, but Otabek can only find it to be amusing.

His brows jump and his eyes stretch wide.

Bounding up onto his knees, clothed in denim overalls, cuffed at the ankles that ride up too much near his shins for comfort, Yuri crawls to the edge of the barn’s shadow, where the grass grows light and the flowers dwindle. Yuri gazes on at him with green sparks of temptation and force, so strong Otabek wants to let the rake go. Wants It to fall at his feet in the straw bedding as only a hint to his escape into the flowers. Into Yuri. 

“Come on.”

He sways his head slow. “I have to clean the barn before the sun has set.” Before the clouds stretch overhead and the rain comes so that he can gather the cattle inside. In a heat this dry and suffocating it is only some time before it rains.

“I'm sure the cows don't fucking mind a little unruly hay, Otabek,” Yuri's eyes rolls every which way around the field. He wiggles his toes in the grass and cocks his head after making the snide remark. He looks on expectantly for a some semblance of a reprimand. Otabek may have a few years on him, but he's far from an authoritative figure.

Yuri does as he pleases and pays his obedience in the like.

“Come in,” he nods once and goes on with: “then, I'll take a break with you.” He nods once more.

Yuri scrunches his face juvenilely and shakes his head at the compromise. Not quite giving enough for him.“It smells like a farm in there-

“Yuri.” 

Otabek speaks from his gut to make his point. His voice reverberates in the wind that carries it to Yuri’s ears. He tries his hand at it. Deep and stern, the way Nikolai Plisetsky manages, of course much of the force is displaced, but he's pleased with himself. The only indication of his success is in Yuri’s glaring vexation. Brows knit to the bridge of his nose as his lips draw back in an inaudible snarl. 

“You should come inside,” Otabek says softly, to lighten the demand on Yuri. According to his face he doesn’t find the orders appeasing.

He does rise. Yuri walks into the shade of the barn’s shelter, with his nose raised high to coax the slump of the hat's rim from his vision, Yuri comes close. Enters Otabek's space with feline-esque prowl and squinching the his lower eyelids.

Otabek wrings his fingers around the stem of the rake as the rest of him goes still in some odd anticipation as Yuri comes closer and closer. Otabek can feel his presence now, the hair on his arms rise. The rake falls and otabek arms stretch to hover around Yuri’s being. Almost on him...

Yuri has powers. Magical ones that make Otabek weak.

Otabek wonders if he knows. It he knows how bright and intense his eyes are when he wants something.

The hat is thin, thin and flimsy, but wide and solidly woven. Otabek can feel it in the material as he lifts the hat from Yuri's crown and casts it down, arms grazing Yuri's side and pressing the damn thing along his backside.

“I'm here,” he announces, rocking into Otabek's touch, entrapped and, by his own will, staying. 

His hands venture to Otabek’s abdomen, fingers graze through the slight outlines of muscles that form naturally under his daily regime of farm demands and not much else. Yuri rises and rises until his toes bend and his face nears Otabek’s own. Then, he leans and Otabek doesn’t make up the way, but nor does he move, so Yuri goes on. On, until their lips come together and Otabek’s open eyes go shut just like Yuri’s own.

“Let me take you somewhere else,” Yuri whispers just as Otabek’s eye open. The mischief in his gaze is quite persuasive.

***

Nikolai is very lenient with Yuri. Much too lenient, Alan often voices to Otabek. As if anyone has some authority over the blonde.

At the end of the day, when his sisters have gone to bed and his mother reads before she finds sleep as well, he says it again. As if he knows something about their relationship that he shouldn't, that has yet to manifest entirely between them. The implications that Otabek would have anything to be “in control” of makes him wary of the commentary. Yuri would sooner maim someone than become compliant to their will- Nikolai an unspoken exception.

Otabek considers Alan thinking they are more than friendly, and perhaps they are, but Otabek has never told his father of the intentions he and Yuri have for each other. Intentions they don't actually have, or at least which Otabek had little idea about. Alan had always thought Yuri was a strange boy, had told Otabek so when they became a pair of sorts and Yuri would spend too much time in their yard with the wild chickens and Potya that would scare them senseless when she played. Otabek had brushed it off with little regard, as Alan obviously didn't know that he had approached Yuri. They're friends because of Otabek.

Surely he has no idea of the kisses behind the barn?

“Go, bathe. You smell of the cattle,” Alan says, hand waving him off for the night. He drinks his tea with both hands on the mug, face partially hidden by it's placement.

“I was in the barn all day after all,” Otabek reasons, shoulders jerking as he shrugs. He blinks amongst his guilty features as he keeps to himself the secret that he was not, in fact, in the barn all day.

“And so, you should bathe.” Alan takes a large gulp of his tea then, watching Otabek pointedly over the porcelain of his mug. “The heat was exhausting today. Go to bed soon. Rest.”

Otabek moves gingerly, allowing only seconds of blank eye contact before slipping out of his seat and rising to his feet. The ache in them is an attest to his work and the small hike Yuri took him on, to the quiet edges of the lake. Where he grew hot under the rays of sun that peaked through the trees and the heat that steamed over the surface of the earth, as well as against Yuri flush over him.

“Is there anything you want me to do tomorrow?” He ask before he's gone from sight.

“Not a thing.”

“‘Night, then,” Otabek says, and then he's gone, out of the arched threshold to the foyer where he pads around on bare feet for just a moment. Touching his damp, cold hands to his lips before ascending the stairs. Alan can't tell, but Otabek smells of Yuri too. Of the, claimed to be, scentless lotion his applies to his pale body, that only really gives hint being faint of plastic and chalky. Of the lavender and product he soothes into his scalp and teases his hair with. Sometimes, he smells like food, Russian things, that Otabek isn't familiar with in the least.

Sometimes, as ironic as it may be, he smells like nature. Like fresh rain and the damp foliage that comes afterward and his hair is the growing fruit of whatever shampoo he uses. Except, the artificial scent of chemicals is always missing. Otabek can never tell.

Otabek strips away his clothes without much haste at all, and stands mostly still in the shower when he attempts to make sense of himself. Of the new, but very sound and intact, need to have Yuri, in so many perceptions of the word. Everyday that passes only served to strengthen his feelings. He doesn’t give attention to the stiffness between his legs. He has control over things. Minimal control, at least.

Kisses aren't the most risque, but to occupy a quiet shore, off the edge of a slow stream, and kiss for what felt like hours...never stopping to do much else but breath. 

Juvenile it may be, but God, did it feel good.

***

That once Otabek saw Yuri exhausted to the weather was a moment more frightening than anything else he's encountered. 

It’s been days since he’s seen him now. These random stretches of time happen every now and again, but just because Otabek is aware of it, used to it even, doesn’t mean that he is accepting.

When he doesn't see Yuri for days he has nothing to do but make assumptions. The longer they’ve been friends, the more time he’s spent thinking. He’s not clingy, not needy in the like, but curious. He dwells in silence.

And when he gets anxious and is close to throwing caution to the wind just to go to the Plisetsky house down the road and check on Yuri himself, the blond finally saunters around the edge of some woodsy pathway and puts himself directly in Otabek's sights like a blessing. He embodies the image of purity effortlessly in all that he is. Answers Otabek’s concern with just his presence.

It’s a gloomy day, with virtually no sun, but the heat rages on. The humidity makes Otaebk sticky under his clothes even without the beam of sun rays. Sometimes, when the clouds part just right, the sun makes herself known. Otherwise, the sky is grey, the air is humid and moist and yet Yuri has on red rain boots that clash with the aura of all that surrounds him. The boots bring a brightness to the blonde atop his head and the green in his eyes.

He looks refreshed. The bags that form under his eyes on hot days have gone and his skin has a supple glow that maintains the paleness as usual.

Otabek smiles, a simple curl of his mouth the entire way until Yuri reaches the boundaries of the yard. He glares at him like Otabek’s done something wrong. As he opens the metal gate and steps into the front yard. As he closes it behind him without his sights on the thing. As he avoids the stonework path and stomps through the growing stems of grass Alan will probably expect Otabek to mow soon.

Yes, Yuri, blond and small and only just 16, is pretty angelic. Otabek can’t help but to think so.

And then, Yuri opens his mouth and Otabek remembers that fallen angels do exist. 

“Grandpa threatened to send my ass so far north there is no summer,” Yuri says to the inquires that don't make it off Otabek’s tongue before they wind up in his browline and his eyes. “He says the sovs are done, but I think he’s fucking with me.”

Yuri also doesn't wait for the invite or any nonverbal cues before fitting himself into the swing and overly close to Otabek given there is room for three, the majority of it goes unused at the other end of the wooden bench. Otabek wouldn't resist and these days, he would have it no other way.

The swing jerks under Yuri's weight. He kicks eagerly off his toes to speed up the motion as Otabek hadn't been rocking very noticeably in the first place. A simple lift of his heels had shifting to a full on graze of his soles to the grassless patches of dirt underneath.

“How are you feeling?” Otabek asks because he wants to know if Yuri really feels up to being around, or if he’s simply looking for something to do. Nikolai would bolt him to radiator with a 2 meter chain if he kept this up.

“Yeah, I'm not gonna die, Otabek.”

“You’re too reckless, Yuri.”

“It’s gonna take more than a little sun to get rid of me.”

It sounds like something Nikolai would say. Otabek looks at Yuri. Drinks in his being like water on a day so exhausting that he doesn’t finish his chores and feels no remorse for it in the moment. His hair is half up, in a knot atop his head, while the rest sways at his nape.

Yuri settles back into the swing, shifting them along, back and forth. Slouched back comfortably and gazing on at the horizon ahead with a blank look. A look beyond the sights of the sun, as if he’s not really there, seeing the migration of dark clouds above. His young face has a maturity about it that leaves Otabek basking in his aura like he has something to learn from him. Watching and observing.

Otabek turns to watch the horizon too. If Yuri found it strange to be stared at like such, he never says so. He stares forward, absolutely focused.

The cicadas have gained a rhythm and so have the trees, the song they make substitutes the silence for that nature sound that is just soothing enough to drown out every instance of awkwardness. Though, their lips have met enough to make light of their thighs pressed to one another. 

It feels like rain is close, the trees, their song, it slows and builds with winds that are harsh and quick. It feels like they’re waiting for something. Otabek has the impatience, but not for the rain. It boils over in his stomach, hot and demanding.

The hand in Otabek’s lap could easily find the one in Yuri’s, but being just outside his family’s home, a sight to see right out of the parlor's bay windows, poses a risk he has to remind himself of. Whether it be inquiries from them or his own reflections to make sense of. When Yuri comes, it’s hard to keep to himself.

Otabek wonders if Yuri feels the same.

He does flop down so close to Otabek there is no space left between them, but Otabek has grown accustomed to Yuri’s habits, and knows well that his proximity issues are akin to a security blanket for him. It’s flattering and nerve wracking all at once for the boy who likes Yuri’s kisses too much. Who wants to touch him, if only it means grazing the backs of his knuckles against Yuri’s tiny wrist or his skinny thighs.

But Otabek is thankful. It’s nice to get this. He’s glad to take what Yuri is willing give. 

“I’m bored, summer sucks,” Yuri groans.

“I like it.” Otabek humfs.

“I know. You don’t sunburn instantaneously,” Yuri deadpans at the paleness of his skin in comparison to Otabek’s glowing, olive skin. With little hesitation, Yuri crosses the line between them created by their thighs spread to touch, Otabek’s own a hell of a lot more filled out than Yuri’s. He lays his arm next to Otabek’s on Otabek’s very own thigh and spreads out his palm.

It gives the impression that Yuri will actually burst into flames the way he speaks, but Otabek knows it’s just an exaggeration. That Yuri just grows exhausted under the heat of summer, too stubborn to spend it inside like he should. He gazes at him for only seconds more before turning downward to see the comparison. 

***

It's a gloomy day. Humid and grey outside for all several hours that Otabek has been awake. A day that's so somber and uneventful that it seems to zoom. Over before it really starts. Morning, afternoon and evening have come and gone and you don't quite realize how the day just passes around you.

Yuri says the horses don't like him, so he stays in the doorway of the stables. The neighing and whining is proof of it he says. Otabek doesn't force him to come in or attempt to spread his scent amongst them, convince them with cautious hands and a soft voice that he's friendly. He does make a show of interacting with each horse as he feeds them, gazing at Yuri every now and then in mildly taunting way. No one just stands next to horses and never attempts to interact with said horses. They were just an animal people did that with, because it was so rare to see one unless you had them or lived on a farm. The curiosity was natural.

He kicks hay around in the meantime.

"Let's go to the river today?" The inflection in his voice makes it sound like a question, though he poses it like a suggestion. He's strange today. Quiet. Calculating. He's been watching Otabek far more than he's been talking. It's the kind of Yuri mood that makes Otabek wonder what it is that he gets into when he's not with Otabek. He just appears.

"I've gotta stay close to the house today," Otabek sighs. "My parents have gone into the city about something to do with land. My sisters are here."

He's wiping his hands together of the powdery film that settles in when he works around the animals. His gaze with Yuri is unobstructed and serious, though Otabek can't begin to imagine why. And not because they're missing out on the opportunity to get away, it's heavier than that. 

He wipes his hands on his jeans and loses his slight smile, never realizing he was smiling until it fades.

"Are you okay, Yuri?"

Yuri slips around the corner, holding the door open with his back. Fingers pressing into the wood behind him. He's biting his lip. He's pale, he's the color of the dreadful day that ticks around them.

Otabek feels the worry now. As it etches into Yuri's brows he can feel it in his gut. Something's just not right.

"No-" Yuri starts, his breath catches him his throat and he sinks back, though he can't get any farther already pressed against the wood has hard as he can possibly be. "I mean...I just need something."

He reaches out a hand. Otabek had on a navy blue t shirt. Yuri takes a handful of it. "A distraction, I guess?"

"From what?" 

Otabek moves forward only to give Yuri the crowding he's asking for. Reaching out to take hold of Yuri's hands partially because of the way his knuckles tickle the edges of Otabek's hip, and the other part being because it was simply an opportunity to touch him.

He's not warm in the slightest. "Are you getting sick?" 

"No." Yuri pulls Otabek in with the hand that holds his, yanking it to his the side of his slender thigh and against the wooden stable door. "I just want you."

Thete's a numbness that still washes over Otabek when a kiss is particularly good. Like, when Yuri doesn't just press his lips to Otabek, he licks into his mouth real slow and kisses his top lip so tenderly all that Otabek can do is sigh and tense up all over. And then there is some pick up in pace and both of them are opening their mouths and kneading.

Yuri grips his hand so hard that Otabek has to throw the other one up and drab the door for balance. Before he collapses in and really envelopes Yuri. 

It's hard to say he knows anything about passion or desire or intimacy, but he likes to think there something special about kissing Yuri that boarders on all of those things. Something special that makes Yuri groan in frustration and Otabek so weak he could just about moan. Out loud and full of want. Yuri's name.

"Oh, fuck," 

It's true that he's weak for those kinds of kisses, so weak his finger tips are left tingling from his grips on the door and Yuri. Halfway numb.

Yuri's head whips around then. His eyes Find Otabek's hand, pulling from the door and hovering there for just a moment until it dawns on Otabek that he's bleeding. He doesn't see it until he flips his hand around, or rather, until Yuri grips him as quick as Otabek has ever seen him move and twist his palm up for them both.

“Are you afraid of blood?” Otabek asks at the way Yuri blanches. His grips goes tense and shaky.

Yuri shudders then. His hair flies about as he looks everywhere but the gnash that parts along the inside of Otabek’s palm. A beat passes, then he shakes his head slow. His green eyes are wide and Otabek has never noticed much about pupils, but Yuri's have never been so pronounced.

Otabek searches around for some cloth to wrap around the wound so he doesn’t track blood to the house when he goes. The barn isn't the best place to cut oneself and the rusted, old latch from a stall door isn't exactly the object to ignore. 

It stings, but he keeps his palm open, his other tucked underneath to catch the blood that dribbles around the creases. 

He looks to Yuri again, “My mother has some medical experience from past endeavors,” he says quick. "There's a first aid kit in the kitchen."

Yuri’s hand grabs for him in a blur. Otabek can barely tell what happens until they go still and Yuri’s palm is cold around his wrist, tugging him closer. 

“Otabek.” 

“Yuri?”

He never means to say more Otabek figures, it was simply a call to attention. When He looks into Yuri’s eyes and all that he can see is everything he’s ever felt. In a stare so intense he feels the weight of something fall over him. It’s not unlike fear, but what does he have to fear from Yuri after all. What exactly is this? This stillness the washes over him and takes his energy from the pain in his palm and back to the heaviness in his chest.

“Yuri…” He says it again. Otabek twitches to go, but can't move much at all. 

Yuri licks every drop of red from his palm. Lips cocked at the edges as if fangs would grow where his canines exist. In fact, they do look a bit longer than normal as his tongue glides over the wrinkles and veins in Otabek's palm.

In the case that it wasn’t so concerning, Otabek might have gotten quite a kick out of it. Maybe the most painful erection he’s seen in his life, but no, there is something wrong with this. Maybe he's still a little aroused at the sight, but no- he can't rationalize now...

But...

There is something so wrong that Otabek doesn’t make to move when Yuri lets go of his hand and invades his space and...

Licks his jaw..

Then, Yuri's cold tongue moves along Otabek's collar bones, his teeth graze the skin at Otabek's nape and then he traces the thick vein he find there, relaxing in and pressing ever so slightly.

For only a moment, Otabek thinks he's about to be bitten. His thoughts end there and then there is nothing, not even darkness. Just some loss of time. Like is consciousness lags and things happen around him and he has no real awareness.

Until he comes to after a second. He blinks and turns to see Yuri's running, but not towards home.

***

"Is it making you sick?" Alan asks. He doesn't look at Otabek because he doesn't need to, not to notice how dejected he is from the task at hand. Slaughtering an animal was tedious work and they couldn't afford to be sloppy, lest they ruin weeks worth of meat by being careless with the skinning or the innards. 

It was all in the way he hadn't made a conscious effort to do much else than what Alan had asked of him. Staring thoughtfully at the freshly killed cow before them, the buckets of blood he'd drained and everything in between. Never moving though, never asking why Alan used this blade vs. that one, though he explained each step thoroughly, regardless of Otabek's input.

"No, I'm just tired. I'm sorry." Was his excuse, when in truth Otabek could only think of Yuri when he looked, smelled and even thought about the blood that covered them. Alan slicing thin portions of fur cover skin off some portion of the animal's flank was making his hand itch too.

Alan didn't push, but he did hand Otabek a knife. "Cut." He said. "Just like I was before."

He strips out of the suit and showers as soon as his father tells him he can go. It's hot out and he becomes too aware of the smell of blood when he leaves the slaughterhouse. After the chopping and cutting and blood, Otabek is grateful to have never been made to do it and fearful for future occurrences in which he may have too. Killing, skinning and dividing an animal up into portions of meat was not a task he'd ever enjoy.

His sisters follow him around the house because they're bored, seemingly sensing his withdrawal from the world around. They want to play, they want him to toss them and give them piggyback rides and sit them on his shoulders, but he just can't. Not today.

"I should just go over there, and find him myself and...and" 

And what? Otabek whispers to himself. Sometimes when thoughts are too heavy they spill out into words and it's how people end up talking to themselves. Maybe they just have so much to say and no one to say it too that they just say it outloud anyway and it helps?

Except, it doesn't help Otabek. He wants Yuri to explain it because Otabek doesn't like the idea of not seeing him for some unbeknownst string of time in which he can do nothing but fucking think and wonder. It sucks all the time it happens and now it's especially excruciating.

So, he decides not to wait. It's always within his power to seek Yuri out, but the dynamic here is set to a pace that Yuri controls and so when he wants company he'll come to it. He's temperamental and finicky and Otabek respects that. He always comes back though. Like Potya.

It's after dinner that Otabek leaves his house, through the front door and on to the gravel path down the side of their house closest to the woods. Until he's passed the shed, in which he and his father just killed one of their cattle in several hours before. The path ends and the gravel gets sparse until it's just dirt and dead remnants of grass that's been trampled enough to stop growing. There's still enough light out that he'll be able to get through the trees just fine. Summer.

It's quiet out, but there's an eeriness to it that Otabek just has to chuckle at. Otabek makes this trip just often enough to remember it, but hardly enough to feel comfortable randomly showing up at the Plisetsky house. 

What he hopes to find isn't something he considered before taking all the steps to leave his house and make it to the clearing that expands several meters from the treeline to the Plisetsky's front door. Panelled and green. He walks a little slower. What would he even say after knocking? Outside of asking for Yuri. Will Nikolai Plisetsky stare at him with some kind of contempt that makes him regret this entirely.

Does Yuri even want to see him? 

None of that matters though, because none of that happens. It won't because Yuri creeps through his front door before Otabek can even reach the stairs, before Otabek can step into the gravel that marks a path of sorts to their home. Yuri is slow and careful with the creaking door. Then he seems to take a moment, facing away from Otabek in the time he goes still there at the door. Like he knows Otabek is there even without looking at him once, though his head's been down the entire time.

And of course, his initial reaction is the typical excitement, marred now by the idea of Yuri licking blood out of his palms and then biting him much like a…

Hell, he can't even entertain it.

Yuri seems frantic then. He eyes Otabek with wide eyes, jumps of the porch in a single step and take long strides into Otabek's space. Yuri grabs his hand and drags him along until they get beyond the trees. Otabek can barely see, it's just darkness that makes blackened tall figures of the trees that Yuri navigates with quick ease. They don't make eye contact, Yuri won't look directly at him.  
  
“I'm sorry.” 

The haste with which Yuri brings him to the clearing that starts toward the lake, and maneuvers him into place. Held at an arms length by Yuri's grip on his biceps.

“I'm so fucking sorry.”

He's not counting his breaths, but on the way here he was highly aware. Of the sounds and the air and Yuri's feet crushing leaves beneath them.

“Yuri,”

“I'm so fucking stupid,” Yuri shakes Otabek in his grasp. “You can tell me to fuck off, but please don't be mad?”

“Yuri?”

“Fuck, old man is gonna make us move again-"

“Hey?”

“It's--I’m not...normal.”

“What was that?”

Otabek grips his forearms hard enough to simmer him down and to bring reality back between them. Yuri stares at him and Otabek manages to stare back. The uncertainty is tangible. Sudden outburst sits at Yuri lips, waiting to fill the silence, but he holds on for Otabek to gather his thoughts. There's a heart pounding tension, fear that this may be more than either of them can handle or put aside.

"I don't find fiction very entertaining, but it was like you were about to bite me, Yuri."

"I was about to fucking bite you, Beka! And I can promise you I am very much real." Yuri whispers. It's loud, but hushed and forced through his teeth. 

***

His family never comes into his room. His mother and father don't ask him of so much that they need to seek him out, and he does what they ask diligently when he needs to, so sleeping in or disappearing for a while never draws them to come find him. His sisters, rowdy as they can get, don't bother him in his room either, unless it's particularly important to their young lives. Like, if there's a spider in their bedrooms or they just can't get pancake batter to the right texture.

All to say that having Yuri spend the night would draw no suspicion because they wouldn't come bothering him to even find Yuri. Also, being a known friend, there'd likely be no problem. No one's come to see if he's gotten back in the house since leaving earlier and should they feel the need to tonight, it's not as if Yuri will be atop him and sucking red hot blood from his jugular. 

He has to remind himself that Yuri's still just that sickly kid from across the woods to them. His family has no idea of anything else. He shouldn't be so tense.

Looking at Yuri from across his bed, bathed in moonlight and looking just as he always has, but so, so different, Otabek is having a hard time making sense of it all. There is an ethereal air about Yuri now, that Otabek's mind manifests as he watches him. Blonde hair swinging around his low hung head, face hidden in the curtain his hair creates and fingers fidgeting in the blanket beneath them.

Otabek wonders which one of them is more overwhelmed. He still manages to hope it's not Yuri, despite all that's happened. Yuri doesn't deserve to fear loss or rejection, especially since Otabek knows how much he values what he has.

Yuri's been living with the lie that he has lupis for several years. That's what he tells Otabek when they get through Otabek's window. It's been his excuse since the urge to feed on people became too strong to ignore. Instead of people, however, the animals in the forest are how they make due. Occasionally, there's a slip. Otabek is the slip this time.

"What does this mean?" Yuri asks. It's obvious that the distance between them is supposed to be some metaphor for adjusting. Otabek doesn't look uncomfortable at his closeness, but Yuri can tell he's tense. "You never wanna see me again? You have a biting kink now- I don't know."

He finally looks at Otabek, tearing his gaze off of the patchwork quilt they sit on. "I don't often slip up, and I never wanted to scare you."

"I don't...eat as much as grandpa says I should and then this shit happens and," Otabek is very aware of the inflection on the word "eat," and of course he doesn't say anything. Perhaps "feed" would have been a better term.The more effective term, to really drive this home. Otabek finds himself glad Yuri hasn't used the term just yet.

"And then we have to leave."

Yuri keeps playing with a loose thread on the quilt. His eyes aren't on Otabek anymore. "Because I'm fucking stupid."

What does he say? What could he? How does he comfort anyone who's struggle pertains to their diet of blood and keeping it a secret? Well, perhaps some assurance is the first step. Otabek doesn't understand just yet, but he knows that Yuri is still Yuri, no matter how unorthodox this situation is and that means Yuri is probably scared and worried.

"You're still you, Yura." An overwhelmingly simple statement, Otabek elaborates. "Well, this is who you've been the whole time, I just didn't know."

The real question is whether Otabek can live with it or not, but it never dawns on him the way it does Yuri. The matter which Yuri really wants to get to solving. Otabek, in all his confusion and the tension, never considers never seeing Yuri again. Of the many thoughts to cross his mind, cutting Yuri off was never one of them. Yet, it's the one thing teetering around Yuri's mind and the underlying curiosity in everything he's said so far.

"I mean, yeah, but isn't it too much to know now?" Yuri cups his hands around his own face and stares at Otabek through the spaces between his fingers. "You don't think I'll break in and attack you in the middle of the night? Suck you dry or some other weird immortal vampire bullshit."

"Is-is that what you are?" Otabek asks. He doesn't mean to stutter, but his willingness to understand doesn't negate the fact that the situation is straight out of a fever dream. But he's not feverish and he surely isn't asleep.

"I don't know- I mean, I guess, technically. We don't call ourselves vampires, though. That's weird," Yuri says, overly expressive with his hands, but it figures he it just trying to cope.

"Well, you're still you, Yuri, so I guess it doesn't matter." 

"Beka…" He says with a flat look.

"Unless you want to put distance between us now."

"I don't fucking want that.

Otabek nods. He slides down the bed until he can lie on his back. He pats the space next to him and encourages Yuri out of the corner, where his back is to the moon. "Then I don't want it either."

Reluctantly, Yuri crawls over after ignoring Otabek for a silent while and flops down onto his back. His thigh brushes Otabek's like before, and their shoulders rest together, aligned and certainly touching.

"I don't want to leave Almaty," Yuri says, slowly. So soft that it's nearly a whisper. 

Otabek would never allow himself to be the reason for it.

"It'll be my secret now too."

Otabek can feel Yuri's head toss around. His eyes, the way they gleam in dark, is so heavy and so assuring. Otabek turns to stare in return. Yuri's bottom lip is between his teeth.

"Do you still wanna bite me?" Otabek asks.

He wonders how Yuri can summon such a euphoric feeling with just his eyes. He's not pressed to get bitten, but curiosity did kill the cat.

**Author's Note:**

> Now that I've done this, maybe I'll get the balls to post this chapter fic I'm 80k into and sulking over. I ask for your encouragement in the form of comments ;) ~ Anyways, thanks for reading


End file.
